Jeff would have loved it; the starkness, the bare truth, the absence of religiosity: science. And, he would have loved that our first collaboration with The Philadelphia Orchestra, just two weeks ago, was JLA’s Vespers.
There is a coincidence here that is etched in my memory. On the night of April 14, 2014, having spent the day of Jeff’s passing with a shocked and suddenly mourning community 2,000 miles from home, I went upstairs to the hotel room I shared with Steven in the Biltmore to write to our community the news that Jeff was gone. It was rough. As I finished up, we got other news, news that would be joyful any other day: John Luther Adams had won the Pulitzer Prize.
One of the last things Jeff and I laughed about that morning was the unlikelihood of where we were: standing in front of Disney Hall about to sing there with the LA Phil, with one of our next stops Lincoln Center for JLA’s Sila: the breath of the world. How had we gotten there in less than nine years? We looked down and shook our heads with the disbelief we all experience when things actually go our way.
Now, Jeff has been gone nine years, and The Crossing has been together twice that long.
It used to be when I thought of Jeff, I would look down. We do that when we don’t want to be seen holding back an emotion, when we’re embarrassed, or just not willing to expose that level of vulnerability. We do that when we are sad. The Romantics spoke of it often, how the Spring bursts forth for all but the forlorn, who cannot see it, who have forgotten.
Now, my thoughts of him inspire a different kind of head shaking. The kind we use express gratitude, to acknowledge good fortune. Now, I look up. I see Spring. I see Time passing and Time meliorating. I see the Grand Canyon. I see the blues and the pale pink, the dark gray, the deep rose. I see the faces of decades of friends. I see the mark on new music that Jeff has made, a mark that lives in a set of values that guide everything The Crossing does.
One of those values is to not take ourselves too seriously; to recognize that we do something quite niche. That human beings are sorrowful, but we are also ridiculous, and often funny. That, to do our job right, we have to risk – and accept – failure.
One of Jeff’s last emails to me, included this line: We have always said, if this becomes more aggravation than fun, screw it, we will orchestrate a dignified end.
How he would wonder at what we’re up to today. How much fun it’s been, for example, to focus nearly half of this season on one thing he cared deeply about: the Earth, and our relationship to it. Science, people, plants, values.
Wonder.
I know what he would say.
He’d shake his head at the ground and say,
“Meh, let’s not let it go to our heads.”
– Donald, Evanston, April 2023
